12 Jul 2019

How should we respond to alien contact? Scientists ask the public
Scientists wrestling with the delicate issue of how to respond should humanity ever be contacted by an alien civilisation have hit on a radical idea: a survey that asks what the public would do. Members of the UK Seti Research Network (UKSRN) are to launch what they believe will be the largest ever survey of public attitudes towards alien contact on Monday at the Royal Society’s summer science exhibition. The views they gather will help them shape plans for an international protocol that sets the ground rules on how organisations should share news of any signals that are detected; what sense can be made of them; and how, if at all, humans might reply.

Swarm of earthquakes has USGS keeping closer eye on Mt Hood
A swarm of earthquakes have been reported on Northern Oregon’s Mount Hood over the past two days. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), there have been around 40 quakes registered in an area five miles south of the volcano’s summit since Monday afternoon.

Louisiana may get hit by a hurricane this weekend. New Orleans is already flooded.
A storm is brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, and the National Hurricane Center expects it to become a hurricane by Friday or Saturday, with potentially dangerous impacts along the coasts of Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, and the city of New Orleans. The storm could bring as much as 20 inches of rain to the region, which isn’t good, considering that the region is already inundated with rain.

Trump Hits Dems with Census Curveball, Announces Plan To Circumvent SCOTUS
“I am hereby ordering every department and agency in the federal government to provide the Department of Commerce with all requested records regarding the number of citizens and noncitizens in our country,” Trump said, as ABC News reported. “They must furnish all legally accessible records in their possession immediately. We will utilize these vast federal databases to gain a full, complete, and accurate count of the noncitizen population.”

Bombshell Claim: Scientists Find “Man-made Climate Change Doesn’t Exist In Practice”
Scientists in Finland found “practically no anthropogenic [man-made] climate change” after a series of studies. “During the last hundred years the temperature increased about 0.1°C because of carbon dioxide. The human contribution was about 0.01°C”, the Finnish researchers bluntly state in one among a series of papers. This has been collaborated by a team at Kobe University in Japan, which has furthered the Finnish researchers’ theory: “New evidence suggests that high-energy particles from space known as galactic cosmic rays affect the Earth’s climate by increasing cloud cover, causing an ‘umbrella effect’,”

Dow has first close above 27,000 points
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed above 27,000 for the first time after a turbulent day on Wall Street. The S&P 500 also hit a closing high milestone of its own Thursday, a day after its first move above 3,000.

Britain sends second warship to gulf amid tensions with Iran – Sky
Britain is sending a second warship to the Gulf amid growing tensions with Iran after Royal Marines seized an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar last week, Sky News reported. Sky said the destroyer HMS Duncan, which had been earmarked for deployment in the region anyway although not so soon, would sail to the Gulf in the next few days to join the frigate HMS Montrose.

Iran’s hard-to-attack underground nuke facility part of increasing threat
Iran’s hard-to-attack underground Fordow nuclear facility is part of the increasing nuclear threat the country presents as it steadily escalates its violations of the 2015 nuclear deal, a new think tank report says. According to the report by the Institute for Science and International Security, “Fordow is potentially part of Iran’s current threats to progressively go to higher enrichment levels and increase its stocks of enriched uranium.”

Turkey defies US as Russian S-400 missile defence arrives
Turkey has received the first parts of a Russian S-400 missile defence system despite opposition from the US. The shipment arrived in an airbase in the capital Ankara on Friday, the Turkish defence ministry says. The move will anger the US, which has warned that Turkey cannot have both the S-400 anti-aircraft defence system and US F-35 fighter jets.

Russian nuclear submarine: Norway finds big radiation leak
Norway has found a radiation level 800,000 times higher than normal at the wreck of a Russian navy submarine. The Komsomolets sank in the Norwegian Sea in 1989 after a fire on board killed 42 sailors. A sample showed radioactive caesium leaking from a ventilation pipe, but researchers said it was “not alarming”, as the Arctic water quickly diluted it.

Tropical Storm Barry: Flooded New Orleans braces for likely hurricane
Tropical Storm Barry, which is currently moving over the Gulf of Mexico, is likely to develop into a hurricane. It is forecast to hit the US city of New Orleans, which has already seen thunderstorms and flash floods. A state of emergency is in effect and residents in some low-lying areas have been asked to evacuate.

How U.S. Tech Giants Are Helping to Build China’s Surveillance State
An American organization founded by tech giants Google and IBM is working with a company that is helping China’s authoritarian government conduct mass surveillance against its citizens…The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM…has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx…to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently.

Texas Reporter Watches 300 Migrants Cross Border in Six Hours
KGBT CBS4 Reporter Sydney Hernandez traveled to the Texas border at Rincon Village Wednesday night at about 6 p.m. The deserted area on the banks of the Rio Grande is a well-known border crossing area. During the next six hours, Hernandez sent out a series of tweets capturing the images of migrants walking up the dirt roads from the border river where human smugglers cross them at will.

Trump rips tech firms at ‘free speech’ summit
President Donald Trump welcomed prominent conservative social media provocateurs to the White House on Thursday and said that along with himself, they are being treated unfairly by big tech firms, which he says suppress conservative voices. Trump said he has told his administration to look for regulations and legislation that could protect free speech – though he did not provide details on what measures were being discussed…

Exceptional multiple meteor event recorded over Brazil
An exceptional multiple meteor event took place over Brazil at 07:10 UTC on June 26, 2019, and was recorded by a BRAMON video station in Maranhão, Brazil. The preliminarily calculated radiant of this cluster does not seem to be associated with any known meteor shower.